152 
THE COMMON SENSE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 
BK. 1 
we mean that in the community concerned there are always 
accessible persons able to render the service, or to undertake 
the obligation, or transfer the right or command, or give 
possession of the thing, and willing to do so on terms that 
are precisely or approximately known, or can at any rate be 
ascertained. 
Into this circle of exchange enter a vast number of the 
things which I desire, and the command of which I believe 
intimate affect iny well-being; and the sign and symbol 
objects of of all these is money. If a direct exchange either 
desire never f commodities or of services can be arranged, the 
enter the ° , 
circle of transaction is of the same general nature as if the 
exchange, me( jj um 0 f gold were employed, only it is completed 
in one move instead of two; and if gold is not employed as 
a medium, it may still be employed mentally as a common 
measure of comparison to facilitate the arrangement of the 
terms of exchange. To speak of money, then, is a convenient 
and short way of speaking of all the things that enter into 
the circle of exchange; and the difficulty in answering the 
question “ What are they ? ” rises from the fact that these 
things, of which money gives us command, are, strictly speak 
ing, never the ultimate objects of deliberate desire at all, and 
yet, on the other hand, are always essential to securing such 
ultimate objects. “ Money,” in this wider sense of the tilings 
in the circle of exchange which money commands, will secure 
nothing that we deliberately desire, and yet nothing that we 
deliberately desire can be secured without it. That is to say, 
there is no ultimate object of desire which itself enters into the 
circle of exchange and can be directly drawn thence, and there 
is no such ultimate object that can be secured and enjoyed 
without the support of things that do enter into the circle of 
exchange. Mere impulse may direct us this way or that 
without reflection, but as soon as we deliberately desire posses 
sion of any external object, it is because of the experiences or 
the mental states and habits which it is expected to produce 
or to avert. Even articles of food are desired because of the 
anticipated sensations which their consumption will produce 
or the impulse they will gratify, or because of the social 
pleasures with which their consumption will be associated, or 
because of the vigour which they will sustain, or because of